It's happening again! Bigger and better and more anniversary-er than ever!

It may not have escaped your attention that Digitiser is celebrating 30 years of existence in 2023, and to celebrate, two years on from the triumph that was Digi Live 2.0, we're going to be hosting a full weekend of live nonsense, talks, panels and screenings.

​We'll be joined by lots of special guests, and over two nights we intend to entertain the living hell out of you. Your body will be broken and shattered by the time we've finished with you. You'll be begging us to stop. 

Read on for more details, or just throw caution to the wind and book your tickets to Night 1 here and to Night 2 here.

EDIT (20 Jan 2023):
If you want help with accommodation or travel, or have any questions, there's now a Facebook group set up for that: https://www.facebook.com/groups/726702425742043/

EDIT (2 Feb 2023): 
We've requested that the start time of the Friday night be moved to 6.30pm, with doors opening at 6pm. Also - no interval, so that we don't finish too late.

What a year-and-a-bit it has been. Since the last Digi Live happened, Sanja and I almost died in a car accident, the world was hit by a global pandemic, Donald Trump was ousted, and Digi Live 2.0 got postponed.

​Until now.

It's official, kids: we’re less than a month from a brand new Digitiser Live show…!

We’ve all been waiting a long time for this, and we’re working hard to ensure that wait will have been worth it. The show is bigger, madder, safer, and more ambitious than the first one. The time has come for the official Digi Live 2.0. FAQ!
​
Read on for this aforementioned thing.

Hello. Blimey. Been a while, eh? Bean a while. Do you see? Do you, though?

What a year.

In case you missed it, Digi Live got postponed (more on that shortly).

Sanja and I launched a podcast.

We got Covid.

We made a whole bunch of YouTube videos. Sanja became a proper part of the channel. And then we got together with our mates again.

And then we got the okay to go ahead with Digi Live. 

Oh, and yeah... we've decided to do a second series of Digitiser The Show, with video games and everything. 

So, I thought it was long overdue that I gave those of you who aren't Patrons some insight into what is happening, what has been happening, and why...

Have you seen these comedy dinner shows they do? Basically, it's a sort of chicken-in-a-basket night, where actors flail around the diners pretending to be characters from classic sitcoms; Fawlty Towers, Only Fools And Horses, 'Allo 'Allo, and - Thor help us - Mrs Brown's Boys.

Familiar costumes and catchphrases appear in lieu of anything approaching actual creativity, the actors looking slightly off, but not so off as to be completely jarring - so long as you squint. It's warm and familiar, and audiences laugh out of recognition, because some people are sufficiently stupid for that to be enough. 

Anyway, that's what Marvel's Avengers kind of reminded me of. It's Marvel's Avengers: The Comedy Dinner Show. 

"Don't mention The Infinity War! I mentioned it once, but I think I got away with it."

"Hahahahahahahahaha!"

Except here you have to pay extra if you want Iron Man to do that bit where he falls through the bar.

Ghost of Tsushima is the PS4's last big honk, its final big platform exclusive, discharging into our laps a month or so after the penultimate big platform exclusive, The Last of Us Part 2.

To say I enjoyed TLoU2 would be an understatement. It would also be inaccurate. I mean, it's the most miserable video game ever made. I don't think anybody could actually enjoy that amount of relentless anguish and anxiety. It was like being strapped into a gnarly chair, with your eyes forced open by a couple of uncomfortable metal hooks, while Twitter scrolls in front of you on a big screen. 

Also: the room is full of hungry rats. And you're not wearing shoes or trousers. 

It probably didn't help that I binged it in three days, by the end of which I emerged bow-legged from its unrelenting emotional pounding. That isn't a criticism; it just shows you how effective The Last of Us 2 was at making me feel stuff. In my view, there's no doubt it's one of the greatest video games ever made, its lustre dimmed only by the radicalism of bigots.  

While I accept it may have driven its development team to near collapse, it doesn't so much raise the bar for the right way to achieve video game storytelling and characterisation as strap it to a rocket it and fire it into the moon. 

Tsushima, therefore, had a tough act to follow. Regardless, there's no bar-raising here; they keep it firmly on the ground, surrounded by all the predictable comforts we've grown accustomed to. For a game so full of horses, it is perhaps understandable that it did so little to scare them.  

Whereas TLoU2 had a story that could never be easily summarised in a single sentence, Tsushima can be encapsulated thus: a samurai man does some things, because the Mongols have invaded the pretty island where he lives. 

Wait. Two sentences: sometimes he gets a new hat!

And you sometimes see his bare bum. 

Three sentences, then.